If we built a time machine, we wouldn't have to travel back a great distance to find a far different tech world than the one we live in today. Why would we even want to? To retire richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined, of course! Think about it. If you could go back to 2010, imagine the money you could make by placing seemingly absurd bets on the near future. There's not a single person in 2010 who thinks Duke Nukem Forever will ever see the light of day, let alone actually ship in 2011. And who in 2010 would believe Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest PC maker, would seriously consider severing its PC arm, own the best selling tablet (for a period of time) and open source webOS barely more than a year after acquiring Palm for $1.2 billion? That's a parlay even a priest would take.

Alas, our get rich quick scheme is wishful thinking, because plutonium is both expensive and hard to come by. And even if we did get our hands on some, we'd still need a DeLorean. Bummer. The bigger point here is that 2011 has been a crazy year with plenty of wild headlines and plot twists (or par for course, as it were). As we all get ready to kick off a new year, we've gone and assembled a gallery of the top 50 news stories of 2011. Flip through them and be sure to let us know in the comments section which tech events stand out to you the most, including ones we might have missed.

OK, so we don't get a ton of snow out here in San Francisco (see: pretty much none), but we have noticed a fairly massive influx of snow-themed products adorning our lab these past couple of months. As Gordon aptly pointed out a while back, white is the new black, which was the new beige, which...well, we forget the rest of that particular rant.

Point is, white products seem to be cool again, and in the spirit of the holiday season, we thought we'd spotlight some of our favorite alabaster tech products of the last couple of months. Check out the gallery below, and make sure to let us know which products we missed in the comments.

Unless you've been intentionally cutting yourself off from mainstream movies and TV (and we wouldn't blame you if you had), you've probably become aware of the practice known as product placement--when companies pay money to have their product or brand featured in a movie or TV show.

Used judiciously, product placement can be a way for filmmakers to get a little extra cash and flesh out the realism of their world. It makes more sense to see characters at a bar drinking real brands of beer, after all. Unfortunately, Hollywood isn’t known for its subtlety, and product placement can all too often be jarring and obvious.

And, of course, tech brands are no stranger to this kind of advertising. We’ve put together a gallery of 15 of the most shameless, hamfisted instances of tech product placement in movies and TV shows. Check them out, then hit the comments and let us know what we missed.

When you work on a major project for an extended amount of time – be it an awesome new piece of software or some sort of newfangled gadget – you can’t help but become emotionally attached to it. Some even go so far as to call their projects their babies. Well, let’s be blunt: there are some ugly babies out there. And while you might not tell a proud new mother her newborn’s a hideous freak, we’re going to call out some of the worst tech “babies” of all time, be they simple disastrous flops or actual tech-related disasters. Somewhere, coders are covering their faces in shame.

And hey, we’re not just poking fun at these failures; we’re also remembering them, lest they be forgotten and repeated. Because who wants a Virtual Boy 4S?

Computers, like people, come in all shapes and sizes. Except you've never seen people who tip the scales at 200-plus tons. Or expand so radically they essentially cover the earth. Or shrink so small they're no longer visible.

For today we're going to look at the extremes. The smallest. The fattest. The most grandiose. And all things between—including a couple of quick jaunts down memory lane that'll have you pining for the innocent days of olde.

In today's gaming landscape where so many of the must-have new releases launch at 60 dollars, it's great that the PC is loaded with a ton of affordable alternatives. There are a lot of great games out there that cost less than twenty bucks apiece. Who cares about Battlefield 3 when we can get three, four, five, or even more games for the same price? True diamonds, but with a cubic zirconia price tag, these games span a variety of genres, from turn-based strategy to first person shooters to tower defense. They’re all great games, and all cost less than twenty Washingtons.

After watching Captain Picard solving all those Victorian murder mysteries on the Enterprise’s holodeck, we have to say that staring at a basic, flat-panel monitor is sooooo 20th century. Wasn’t the future of television watching supposed to be way cooler than this by now? Yeah, it was, but don’t worry; those spiffy high-tech displays have only been delayed, not scrapped entirely. A veritable army of hard-working engineers have been laboring day and night to bring flexible phones, holograms you can feel, physical 3D interfaces, and touchscreen, well, everything to your living room, car and workplace sometime soon. And hey, we’ve got actual pictures to prove it!

Once you’ve conquered your fear of static electricity and successfully built a kick ass custom PC from the ground up, making the jump to custom electronics isn’t all that intimidating. The open-source Arduino microcontroller breaks down the entry barrier even further. Flexible, powerful, easy-to-use and licensed-to-alter (under Creative Commons Share-Alike), the Arduino is the linchpin behind scads and scads of nifty DIY electronics projects. And hey! It just so happens that we’ve gathered 25 of the coolest, craziest, and most useful Arduino-powered projects in this gallery for your viewing – and building – pleasure. Mind-controlled Nerf guns, anybody? No, it’s not black magic. It’s the magic of Arduino!

It's easy to lose track of those who helped the hero save the day. With that in mind, we decided to throw together a wild and whacky list of our favorite sidekicks in gaming (we did consoles too, we're sorry) to give thanks to all the loyal sidekicks who've had our backs over the years.

Hit the jump for the full blown gallery, and make sure and let us know who we missed in the comments field!

Nothing speaks to the power and flexibility of the PC platform quite like game modding. Dedicated groups of hardcore fans toil for months on end to bring us a massive offering of tweaks, rebalances, texture packs, content packs, and total conversions that improve, expand, and transform the games we love.

Ok, so 90% of mods are still about furries, 3d porn, and sticking Mario's head on Darth Vader's body. But when not about lust or rampant copyright infringement, mods offer some of the most unique and interesting content in gaming. Hit the jump for some of our favorite mods from recent gaming history.